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April 9, 2011
Reconfigured Can Maker Invigorates Dogpatch
By ASHWIN SESHAGIRI
The Dogpatch neighborhood, seen from the fourth floor of the American Industrial Center, has become a destination
In the Dogpatch neighborhood, along a once-desolate stretch of San Francisco’s Third Street, lies what some call a skyscraper on its side. It is the former home of the American Can Company, a manufacturer that once employed thousands in its four-block-long plant overlooking the bay.
Today, rechristened the American Industrial Center, or A.I.C., the complex is home to 275 small- and medium-sized businesses including industrial designers, video production firms and chocolatiers. Though not a business incubator in the traditional sense, the complex has emerged as a hub of collaborative entrepreneurship and a breeding ground for new companies, notably ones in food and technology.
The A.I.C. has also helped put the Dogpatch neighborhood, long an industrial desert in a post-industrial world, on the city’s cultural and economic map. With the opening of the Muni T-line in 2007 and the development of nearby Mission Bay, people have long predicted the Dogpatch would be the next destination neighborhood.
The recession has slowed development and helped preserve the area’s wide-open, rough-and-tumble feel. But judging by the A.I.C.’s 4 percent vacancy rate, which is well below industry average, that is just fine with many of the businesses there.
Michael Recchiuti, one of the city’s most celebrated chocolate makers, opened a tiny kitchen and production facility in the A.I.C.’s south building with his wife, Jacky, in 1997. Back then, Mr. Recchiuti recalls, sewing shops dominated the complex, and it was common to see chickens for sale in wooden crates along Third Street.
The couple has since expanded to four bays in the south building, and with expansion has come collaboration. A photographer upstairs shoots all of the chocolatiers’ pictures, and a graphic designer next door helps create marketing materials.
“You’ve got a neighbor,” said Jacky Recchiuti, joking that she could knock on someone’s door to ask for a cup of sugar. “People are willing to help each other out.”
On a late winter afternoon, the south building resembles a dorm hall, with giggling tenants running from unit to unit, brushing against posters promoting art shows. The dense scent of the Recchiutis’ baking chocolate creeps down the concrete halls.
Since the Recchiutis moved into the A.I.C. nearly 15 years ago, several other notable food ventures have joined them: the New American restaurant Serpentine, the high-end sandwich and catering company Kitchenette, and the ice cream shop Mr. and Mrs. Miscellaneous, to name a few. It’s where Kika’s Treats produces artisanal baked goods. It’s where Sutton Cellars has set up an appointment-only wine business, and where the next Magnolia Brewery will be opening later this year.
Startup-friendly environments are nothing new to San Francisco, and collective workspaces including Kicklabs, Dogpatch Labs and i/o Ventures are thriving. While most are dominated by Internet-related businesses, others have branched out into other industries, notably food, in the case of La Cocina, based in the Mission district, and social entrepreneurship, in the case of the Hub in SoMa.
Some provide business services and formal support arrangements — the traditional business incubator model — that are not offered at A.I.C. Common among all, however, is the notion that new businesses can benefit from a physical community of like-minded ventures.
James Monsees, 31, started Ploom, a company that manufactures devices to vaporize tobacco, five years ago with a Stanford classmate. As he sucked on one of his devices and blew vapor doughnuts one recent afternoon, Mr. Monsees gestured toward the exposed H.V.A.C. system bisecting the ceiling of his lofted office. He described how Ploom split its heating and cooling bills with other tenants.
Neighboring Revision3, for example, an Internet video production company started by Kevin Rose, the founder of the social site Digg.com, requires a lot of energy to cool its servers, despite the normally low temperatures of the former industrial space, Mr. Monsees said. Ploom needs only to heat its space and thanks to a water pump system installed on the roof, the heat generated by powering the air-conditioners at Revision3 can be recycled to keep the workers at Ploom warm.
Dave McLean, the owner of Magnolia Gastropub and Brewery and the Alembic Bar on Haight Street, is also excited about working with his neighbors.
“We already have some fun things planned with Sutton Cellars,” Mr. McLean, 41, said, adding, “Collaboration is one of the really exciting aspects of the food and beverage communities right now.”
"I particularly love the way great cities re-imagine and reinvent themselves, or parts of themselves, while retaining the character that makes them unique," Mr. McLean said. "To me, that is a spirit that is very evident in the Dogpatch and the A.I.C., and I’d like to be part of that.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/us...anciscobayarea
Chronicle and Building Are Reflection of Economy
By GERRY SHIH
In December 2009, 10 employees from the technology company Square moved into an empty corner of the San Francisco Chronicle building at Fifth and Mission. The space had been stripped bare, but Square gave it touches of startup chic: rows of Apple computers, a sparkling-water dispenser, chandeliers designed by Jonathan Adler.
Square, a mobile payment firm headed by the Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, now has 100 employees packed into what used to be The Chronicle’s human resources department. It is thriving alongside a social entrepreneurship collective, a digital art gallery and other startups that signed leases over the past 18 months with Hearst, The Chronicle’s parent company and the building’s owner.
These success stories contrast starkly with the fortunes of the newspaper. After years of declining circulation and advertising revenue, San Francisco’s most influential paper is finding itself increasingly isolated in the building it has called home since 1924.
The Chronicle building’s continuing transformation is a dramatic example of how the San Francisco economy is changing — even under one roof. With The Chronicle literally shrinking, Hearst and its Cleveland-based developer, Forest City Enterprises, are embarking on a plan to turn a 4.5-acre block around the newspaper — including idled printing facilities — into a commercial and residential campus for innovation.
The developers envision replacing the parking lots and warehouses around the Chronicle building with buildings housing startups, all connected by spruced-up alleys and open-air plazas.
“A lot of people just assume it’s only one building, but we’re creating an ecosystem that lives and breathes art and entrepreneurship,” said Alexa Arena, the Forest City vice president who is leading the project. (Forest City was the development partner for the Manhattan headquarters of The New York Times Company.)
Charles A. Fracchia, president of the San Francisco Historical Society, said it was “ironic” that Hearst appeared to be giving over the Chronicle building to tech firms.
“This is about organic changes in urban life coupled with the fact of always-changing technology,” Mr. Fracchia said. “The utilization of that space for a dying newspaper, in their eyes, just doesn’t pencil out.”
The age of the building, its monolithic presence south of Market Street, and lingering sentimentality about The Chronicle could present obstacles to Forest City’s plans, according to some city officials. They said the company has privately told them it envisions building several office towers as tall as 400 feet, which could come under opposition from neighborhood groups.
Anticipating a long and politically tricky process, Forest City is quietly courting City Hall and local residents and assembling a powerhouse stable of architects, housing experts and lobbyists — even as The Chronicle’s remaining staff members ponder whether the paper will ultimately be evicted from its home.
Frank J. Vega, The Chronicle’s chairman and publisher, said in a statement that the newspaper and its Web site, SFGate.com, “will occupy the building at Fifth and Mission for the foreseeable future.”
Forest City hired a firm headed by two former chiefs of the Office of Economic and Workforce Development under Mayor Gavin Newsom to consult on the project. It also hired Charles E. Chase, president of San Francisco’s Historic Preservation Commission, to review the building’s historical preservation status.
The developer will have to submit the review to the San Francisco Planning Commission before making changes to the property. Mr. Chase said that because the Historic Preservation Commission is part of the planning commission, he intends to recuse himself from any decisions.
In recent weeks, city officials said Hearst and Forest City executives had brought a “road show” to City Hall to meet with officials, even though the project appears to be years from requiring city approval.
“Their ideas are innovative and very responsive to market needs,” said Jennifer E. Matz, the current director of the mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development. “I’m really interested in seeing how their plans develop.”
Whatever happens, it is clear the Chronicle building and its surrounding neighborhood are already changing dramatically.
On a recent afternoon, a young woman in a bright teal skirt walked gingerly across the Hub, a shared work space for startups on the first floor of the Chronicle building, holding a cup of coffee while reading from a MacBook Air that was perched precariously on her forearm.
“I sometimes look out the window; there are all these interesting-looking people down there, and I don’t know what they’re doing,” said Carl Nolte, a veteran editor and columnist who has been at The Chronicle since 1959. “But they bring vitality to the place. I like that.”
In 1924, The Chronicle moved into its building South of Market — South of the Slot, as the working-class neighborhood’s Irish residents called it. The paper settled in alongside food-processing businesses, maritime supply shops and warehouses.
Twenty years ago, the financial district began to spread south of Market, and “full-court redevelopment” began to creep southwest along Mission and Howard Streets, said Mr. Fracchia.
The Chronicle operations once occupied most of the building. But in 2009, after laying off half its editorial staff, the newspaper consolidated its editorial operations on the third floor.
Since the first dot-com boom 10 years ago, newspaper staff members say, rumors of an imminent move have circulated as regularly as wacky news tips about the Zodiac killer. Some speculated that the paper could be relocated as far away as Marin County. In a 2007 interview, Stephen T. Hearst, the general manager of Hearst’s Western properties division, publicly mulled razing the Chronicle building.
Brad Paul, a housing consultant hired by Forest City to work on the project, said the developer is now operating under the assumption that the Chronicle building will be left intact. But Ms. Arena, who is directing the project, was more circumspect, saying that at a minimum, Forest City intends to “celebrate” the building’s historic elements, like the clock tower. She emphasized that Forest City would begin a lengthy process to solicit community input and that no firm plans had been drafted.
The city openly views the project as part of its changing landscape. The Chronicle, said Ken Rich, a project manager in the mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, would be ideal for the large-scale expansion of nimble, entrepreneurial-minded companies like the ones that are now proliferating in the building.
“The interesting thing about this project is it makes people ask the question of, ‘Where are jobs going to go in the next two decades?’ ” said Mr. Rich.
Gabriel Metcalf, executive director of San Francisco Planning + Urban Research Association, a local policy group, said the neighborhood around Fifth and Mission is a logical extension of the city’s continuing economic evolution. “The location is extraordinary,” Mr. Metcalf said. “It’s important to the city that we really make use of this site because they are trying to invent a new kind of work environment that is going to work for the economy of the future.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/us...anciscobayarea
Reconfigured Can Maker Invigorates Dogpatch
By ASHWIN SESHAGIRI
The Dogpatch neighborhood, seen from the fourth floor of the American Industrial Center, has become a destination
In the Dogpatch neighborhood, along a once-desolate stretch of San Francisco’s Third Street, lies what some call a skyscraper on its side. It is the former home of the American Can Company, a manufacturer that once employed thousands in its four-block-long plant overlooking the bay.
Today, rechristened the American Industrial Center, or A.I.C., the complex is home to 275 small- and medium-sized businesses including industrial designers, video production firms and chocolatiers. Though not a business incubator in the traditional sense, the complex has emerged as a hub of collaborative entrepreneurship and a breeding ground for new companies, notably ones in food and technology.
The A.I.C. has also helped put the Dogpatch neighborhood, long an industrial desert in a post-industrial world, on the city’s cultural and economic map. With the opening of the Muni T-line in 2007 and the development of nearby Mission Bay, people have long predicted the Dogpatch would be the next destination neighborhood.
The recession has slowed development and helped preserve the area’s wide-open, rough-and-tumble feel. But judging by the A.I.C.’s 4 percent vacancy rate, which is well below industry average, that is just fine with many of the businesses there.
Michael Recchiuti, one of the city’s most celebrated chocolate makers, opened a tiny kitchen and production facility in the A.I.C.’s south building with his wife, Jacky, in 1997. Back then, Mr. Recchiuti recalls, sewing shops dominated the complex, and it was common to see chickens for sale in wooden crates along Third Street.
The couple has since expanded to four bays in the south building, and with expansion has come collaboration. A photographer upstairs shoots all of the chocolatiers’ pictures, and a graphic designer next door helps create marketing materials.
“You’ve got a neighbor,” said Jacky Recchiuti, joking that she could knock on someone’s door to ask for a cup of sugar. “People are willing to help each other out.”
On a late winter afternoon, the south building resembles a dorm hall, with giggling tenants running from unit to unit, brushing against posters promoting art shows. The dense scent of the Recchiutis’ baking chocolate creeps down the concrete halls.
Since the Recchiutis moved into the A.I.C. nearly 15 years ago, several other notable food ventures have joined them: the New American restaurant Serpentine, the high-end sandwich and catering company Kitchenette, and the ice cream shop Mr. and Mrs. Miscellaneous, to name a few. It’s where Kika’s Treats produces artisanal baked goods. It’s where Sutton Cellars has set up an appointment-only wine business, and where the next Magnolia Brewery will be opening later this year.
Startup-friendly environments are nothing new to San Francisco, and collective workspaces including Kicklabs, Dogpatch Labs and i/o Ventures are thriving. While most are dominated by Internet-related businesses, others have branched out into other industries, notably food, in the case of La Cocina, based in the Mission district, and social entrepreneurship, in the case of the Hub in SoMa.
Some provide business services and formal support arrangements — the traditional business incubator model — that are not offered at A.I.C. Common among all, however, is the notion that new businesses can benefit from a physical community of like-minded ventures.
James Monsees, 31, started Ploom, a company that manufactures devices to vaporize tobacco, five years ago with a Stanford classmate. As he sucked on one of his devices and blew vapor doughnuts one recent afternoon, Mr. Monsees gestured toward the exposed H.V.A.C. system bisecting the ceiling of his lofted office. He described how Ploom split its heating and cooling bills with other tenants.
Neighboring Revision3, for example, an Internet video production company started by Kevin Rose, the founder of the social site Digg.com, requires a lot of energy to cool its servers, despite the normally low temperatures of the former industrial space, Mr. Monsees said. Ploom needs only to heat its space and thanks to a water pump system installed on the roof, the heat generated by powering the air-conditioners at Revision3 can be recycled to keep the workers at Ploom warm.
Dave McLean, the owner of Magnolia Gastropub and Brewery and the Alembic Bar on Haight Street, is also excited about working with his neighbors.
“We already have some fun things planned with Sutton Cellars,” Mr. McLean, 41, said, adding, “Collaboration is one of the really exciting aspects of the food and beverage communities right now.”
"I particularly love the way great cities re-imagine and reinvent themselves, or parts of themselves, while retaining the character that makes them unique," Mr. McLean said. "To me, that is a spirit that is very evident in the Dogpatch and the A.I.C., and I’d like to be part of that.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/us...anciscobayarea
Chronicle and Building Are Reflection of Economy
By GERRY SHIH
In December 2009, 10 employees from the technology company Square moved into an empty corner of the San Francisco Chronicle building at Fifth and Mission. The space had been stripped bare, but Square gave it touches of startup chic: rows of Apple computers, a sparkling-water dispenser, chandeliers designed by Jonathan Adler.
Square, a mobile payment firm headed by the Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, now has 100 employees packed into what used to be The Chronicle’s human resources department. It is thriving alongside a social entrepreneurship collective, a digital art gallery and other startups that signed leases over the past 18 months with Hearst, The Chronicle’s parent company and the building’s owner.
These success stories contrast starkly with the fortunes of the newspaper. After years of declining circulation and advertising revenue, San Francisco’s most influential paper is finding itself increasingly isolated in the building it has called home since 1924.
The Chronicle building’s continuing transformation is a dramatic example of how the San Francisco economy is changing — even under one roof. With The Chronicle literally shrinking, Hearst and its Cleveland-based developer, Forest City Enterprises, are embarking on a plan to turn a 4.5-acre block around the newspaper — including idled printing facilities — into a commercial and residential campus for innovation.
The developers envision replacing the parking lots and warehouses around the Chronicle building with buildings housing startups, all connected by spruced-up alleys and open-air plazas.
“A lot of people just assume it’s only one building, but we’re creating an ecosystem that lives and breathes art and entrepreneurship,” said Alexa Arena, the Forest City vice president who is leading the project. (Forest City was the development partner for the Manhattan headquarters of The New York Times Company.)
Charles A. Fracchia, president of the San Francisco Historical Society, said it was “ironic” that Hearst appeared to be giving over the Chronicle building to tech firms.
“This is about organic changes in urban life coupled with the fact of always-changing technology,” Mr. Fracchia said. “The utilization of that space for a dying newspaper, in their eyes, just doesn’t pencil out.”
The age of the building, its monolithic presence south of Market Street, and lingering sentimentality about The Chronicle could present obstacles to Forest City’s plans, according to some city officials. They said the company has privately told them it envisions building several office towers as tall as 400 feet, which could come under opposition from neighborhood groups.
Anticipating a long and politically tricky process, Forest City is quietly courting City Hall and local residents and assembling a powerhouse stable of architects, housing experts and lobbyists — even as The Chronicle’s remaining staff members ponder whether the paper will ultimately be evicted from its home.
Frank J. Vega, The Chronicle’s chairman and publisher, said in a statement that the newspaper and its Web site, SFGate.com, “will occupy the building at Fifth and Mission for the foreseeable future.”
Forest City hired a firm headed by two former chiefs of the Office of Economic and Workforce Development under Mayor Gavin Newsom to consult on the project. It also hired Charles E. Chase, president of San Francisco’s Historic Preservation Commission, to review the building’s historical preservation status.
The developer will have to submit the review to the San Francisco Planning Commission before making changes to the property. Mr. Chase said that because the Historic Preservation Commission is part of the planning commission, he intends to recuse himself from any decisions.
In recent weeks, city officials said Hearst and Forest City executives had brought a “road show” to City Hall to meet with officials, even though the project appears to be years from requiring city approval.
“Their ideas are innovative and very responsive to market needs,” said Jennifer E. Matz, the current director of the mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development. “I’m really interested in seeing how their plans develop.”
Whatever happens, it is clear the Chronicle building and its surrounding neighborhood are already changing dramatically.
On a recent afternoon, a young woman in a bright teal skirt walked gingerly across the Hub, a shared work space for startups on the first floor of the Chronicle building, holding a cup of coffee while reading from a MacBook Air that was perched precariously on her forearm.
“I sometimes look out the window; there are all these interesting-looking people down there, and I don’t know what they’re doing,” said Carl Nolte, a veteran editor and columnist who has been at The Chronicle since 1959. “But they bring vitality to the place. I like that.”
In 1924, The Chronicle moved into its building South of Market — South of the Slot, as the working-class neighborhood’s Irish residents called it. The paper settled in alongside food-processing businesses, maritime supply shops and warehouses.
Twenty years ago, the financial district began to spread south of Market, and “full-court redevelopment” began to creep southwest along Mission and Howard Streets, said Mr. Fracchia.
The Chronicle operations once occupied most of the building. But in 2009, after laying off half its editorial staff, the newspaper consolidated its editorial operations on the third floor.
Since the first dot-com boom 10 years ago, newspaper staff members say, rumors of an imminent move have circulated as regularly as wacky news tips about the Zodiac killer. Some speculated that the paper could be relocated as far away as Marin County. In a 2007 interview, Stephen T. Hearst, the general manager of Hearst’s Western properties division, publicly mulled razing the Chronicle building.
Brad Paul, a housing consultant hired by Forest City to work on the project, said the developer is now operating under the assumption that the Chronicle building will be left intact. But Ms. Arena, who is directing the project, was more circumspect, saying that at a minimum, Forest City intends to “celebrate” the building’s historic elements, like the clock tower. She emphasized that Forest City would begin a lengthy process to solicit community input and that no firm plans had been drafted.
The city openly views the project as part of its changing landscape. The Chronicle, said Ken Rich, a project manager in the mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, would be ideal for the large-scale expansion of nimble, entrepreneurial-minded companies like the ones that are now proliferating in the building.
“The interesting thing about this project is it makes people ask the question of, ‘Where are jobs going to go in the next two decades?’ ” said Mr. Rich.
Gabriel Metcalf, executive director of San Francisco Planning + Urban Research Association, a local policy group, said the neighborhood around Fifth and Mission is a logical extension of the city’s continuing economic evolution. “The location is extraordinary,” Mr. Metcalf said. “It’s important to the city that we really make use of this site because they are trying to invent a new kind of work environment that is going to work for the economy of the future.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/us...anciscobayarea